CFP96 Paper
CFP96 Paper
The free flow of information is not the same as the flow of free information. - Gordon Graham
Authors, traditionally keepers of the written culture, have fought hard to win their independence as individual creators. Copyright, the basis of their legal autonomy, has enabled them to strengthen and preserve their independence by conferring on them a series of rights that can be traded for money. This system has benefitted society as a whole since its inception in eighteenth century Britain. Before this time permission to write and publish were the prerogative of the monarch. It is therefore no unreasonable claim that copyright and democracy are closely interlinked and in some ways mutually dependent. The suppression of the written word is certainly a feature of all modern totalitarian societies.
Copyright, however, has always been predicated on physical objects. The coming of the digital age has put the process of copyright protection in jeopardy. Once the written word is digitised and becomes one with its carrier, copying becomes effortless. The basis of the writer's independence is therefore potentially under threat.
However, it would be simplistic to say that the threat comes simply from the technological facts of digitisation. Rather it comes from the upheaval in the business of publishing and broadcasting which digital networks seem to imply. The copyright system enables corporations, just as it enables creators, to trade such assets in the same way as they trade physical things. For some years corporations have become increasingly insistent on owning, rather than licensing, intellectual property rights. Such rights subsequently appear on corporate balance sheets as assets, along with plant and machinery.
In the climate of ownership rather than licensing, the digitisation of cultural products to which such rights attach has made corporations very nervous. There is a general perception that their IPR asset base is under siege. As a consequence, such corporate manipulators of copyright are attempting to tighten their grip on their assets. Authors are ever more frequently being faced with demands to yield all rights under contract. Some are resisting, some are not. This new climate of "work for hire" is a direct threat to the independence of the authorial voice.
It is this shift from copyright protection to contract protection that has such a potential for harm in the future. Both the author and the consumer will be tied to corporate owners under conditions under contract. This could have a direct bearing on the freedom to express opinion and to get that opinion published which in turn could have an effect on our system of democratic government.
To summarise, copyright for authors has been both a legal and an ethical framework which has supported the creation of new work. Authors have used copyright as a method of bargaining with their trading partners, whether they be publishers or the reading public. Authors have traditionally not sought to use copyright's potential for monopoly to straightjacket the public. The coming of digital networks, which is pushing copyright to the limit, tends to highlight its monopolistic attributes. However, it is not authors who are moving in this direction. Authors want both a reasonable price and as wide a readership as possible. It is not in their interests to behave otherwise. Corporations, on the other hand, fearful for the security of their IPR asset bases (something quite alien to the thinking of authors), are today using copyright and contract to strengthen their hold on culture.